Storybrooke Coffee
by Degby
Summary: In which Gold is the crabbiest employee of a familiar coffee shop chain.
1. Chapter 1

"Gold?" asked the university student wrinkling up her pierced nose. "Is that your _real_ name?"

"It's what it says on the tin innit?" he said, tight lipped as he rang her up, not caring if he let his irritation show.

"What were your parents—like hippies or something?" Her friend beside her gave a giggle.

Gold just ignored her and handed her the change as they whispered and giggled some more.

"Have a nice day ye doss cunts," he said under his breath and resumed pouring himself his fourth free coffee of the day.

The new girl, Mary Margaret's mouth fell open. "You shouldn't say that!" she whispered breathily.

"Say what?"

"You—what you said—"

"And why the feck not?"

She bristled at the profanity. "Because it's rude and if the manager hears you going on like that you'll get a reprimand," she said primly.

Gold snorted at Mary Margaret, his new trainee, another fresh faced first year university student, she insisted on everyone calling her by her full name and seemed to think they were giving away GPA for being the world's perkiest barista to boot. How she could be that cheery at 6 in the morning, Gold had no idea, but she was the current bane of his existence. Current, because in seven months time, when she went back to whatever little hick town had spawned her for the summer, there'd be someone new and probably even more irritating to fill her shoes, Gold thought. It went without saying that Gold would still be there. The other barristas tended to move on to bigger and better things, but Gold remained year after year, like the gray stone of the old university buildings, only pausing to grow a little grayer and more worn looking with each passing year.

How he kept his job, none of the other employees of Storybrooke Coffee had a clue. He was absolutely shit at his work; perpetually late, didn't seem to even own a standard uniform, never bothered covering up a blurry tattoo on his forearm despite repeated mentions of the Storybrooke Coffee employee manual, was surly as hell to his coworkers, rude to the customers and famous for never budging from his stool behind the counter for anything short of a coffee related apocalypse. His lazy job performance might have been forgiven by his coworkers if he was the sort of person who was very funny, kind or just a nice guy to work with. You could overlook deficiencies in productivity if made up for by a pleasant personality. But Gold wasn't exactly popular with his peers at the shop, who were all at least twenty years younger than him anyway. They shared nothing in common other than a feeling of mutual resentment and that was fine with him.

He was the only one in the shop who had his own stool. He perched on it like some malevolent bird of prey behind the counter. He always wore a black apron which had been part of the old uniform two years ago, instead of a regulation one in friendly green like everyone else. No one knew why, if it was because he'd lost the green one or whether he was just trying to make a statement. Outside his hearing they'd nicknamed him the Dark One, until Ursula, who was working on a double major in African American studies and post colonial literature told them the term had racist overtones and they stopped.

The things they called him when out of earshot now were quite a bit ruder.

No one currently working there had actually given him the stool or said he could sit on it during business hours, but when David, the current manager, had come in the first time to get the lay of the land, there was Gold, sitting on the swivel stool pouring the coffee and he seemed to manage alright, so he figured he might as well leave him there.

Standing Gold was clearly at a disadvantage and it wasn't just because he was shorter than everyone else who worked there. There was something wrong with his right leg. The foot dragged and it pained him badly in inclement weather, making him extra surly, especially in winter. Outside the shop he walked with a cane which he kept locked up in his storage locker in the backroom with a double padlock as if it were precious gold. When on her first day of job training Mary Margaret made the rookie mistake of innocently asking him what happened to him, he smiled sweetly and said he'd hurt it kicking in a trainee's arse for asking too many questions. Mary Margaret was silent the rest of the day as he showed her how to clean the percolator.

"How the hell is that jackass still employed here?" she groused to her friend Ruby, that evening during clean-up. But Ruby was preoccupied, watching her pet pre-med student, still nursing the same cup of coffee he'd been at for three hours, still scanning his textbook until he was forcibly ejected by Storybrooke Coffee's staff.

"His dorm is freezing, poor thing," murmured Ruby a she watched an extremely p.o'ed looking Gold get off his precious stool to whisk Victor away with a broom.

"I swear, that's the first time I've seen Gold touch that thing since I started working here," muttered Graeme the criminology student.

Only David, their manager and part-time agriculture student, looking on knew the truth, but he remained silent. And so the secret of Gold's inexplicably continuing employment at Storybrooke Coffee remained.


	2. Chapter 2

The branch of Storybrooke coffee that was near the university, was just one of five stores throughout the city, all owned by rising entrepeneur Jefferson Madden and Gold's hiring had come from Jefferson directly back when the shop was just starting out.

Although the university location was the first Storybrooke coffee in the city, and Jefferson had once been the manager, he only came in infrequently these days. He was too busy getting shops started in neighbouring university towns to stay in the city for very long and was always easy to identify due to his strange passion for unusual hats, (well every eccentric millionaire needed a memorable quirk).

Only David who had taken over for him at this, the original location, knew the score about Jefferson and Gold. Jefferson had sworn David to secrecy about it, oddly enough because he didn't want to hurt Gold's feelings. Which was odd in and of itself, seeing as Gold had so few qualms about hurting the feelings of others.

Killian, the Irish exchange student, thought at the end of the day Gold flapped his apron like a pair of bat wings and flew off to some dead tree somewhere to sleep upside down like a vampire, but David knew better.

"Who would ever suspect Gold even had a heart at all," David opined out loud to Jefferson.

Jefferson frowned at that. "As my grandmother used to say, 'there but for the grace of God go I.' Although, I would say, it's more down to pure dumb luck, because otherwise it would display a diety's rather nasty sense of humour." He was like that, thought David, apt to explain himself in cryptic words like some 19th century novel rather than cut to the heart of the matter. "If it weren't for Gold I don't know what sort of life me or my family would be having now, or honestly, if I would be alive at all," said Jefferson. "The least I can do is keep him and his son off the streets."

"Son?" David asked.

"Just keep it under your hat, okay?" said Jefferson, stroking the rim of his own black bowler and David only nodded as Jefferson unspooled his story.

David feigned ignorance for his boss, but he was probably the only one other than Jefferson who knew Gold had a son. He'd seen Gold and his son together once before in the local library and you could've knocked him down with a feather, because he had never once suspected that Gold had any family at all.

Some people are connoisseurs of cars, they can tell you the make and model of any car they see on the street at a glance. Some people are connoisseurs of music, they can tell you the name of every musician and every song they hear on the radio. But David was interested in something else entirely. David was a connoisseur of people _._ He saw each person he met as an intriguing mystery, endless variations of personality and physicality fascinating him since he was a boy.

He wasn't from Storybrooke and had arrived in the city knowing no one in his late teens. Growing up in a small town, he'd always been aware of having neighbours who cared for him. It was just like a big extended family, full of people who knew each other's business and looked out for each other, with few unfamiliar faces to break the monotony.

It was different in the city, in the university which was a like a little city of its own within the greater one, having over 45, 000 students and ten downtown city blocks of land completely to itself. No one looked out for you in a school that size. It was easy to be overwhelmed, to find one's self alone in the sea of faces. And so instead of becoming like everyone else in the city, callous and cold, David became the opposite, as if by being a warm welcoming person and listening ear to as many people as he could, he could somehow make up the balance. He wasn't a chatty man, but he knew what to say to bring a person out of themselves and he knew how to watch and how to listen.

Generous, optimistic, tall and broad shouldered, well liked by the staff, David was the last person you'd ever think would befriend Gold, who was small, and cynical and seemed to withdraw into himself unless goaded by another person to anger.

And yet David, almost against his better judgment, found he actually _liked_ Gold. Unlike the employees who quaked in fear of Gold's razor sharp tongue, David never took Gold's jibes seriously. Somehow David thought Gold's dry wit and insults were funny.

This irritated Gold slightly, because really his comments were only supposed to be humorous to himself, but the truth remained that David was the only one who wasn't afraid of him and didn't hate him either and Gold found himself experiencing a grudging respect for the man.

Whenever some of the other employees "accidentally" forgot to replace Gold's stool when they mopped the floor and left it up on a table or above the cabinet where it would be difficult for the older man to take down, David made sure to replace it behind the counter before he locked up at the end of the day.

They were a family, their own little town in a way, Jefferson used to tell him when he was training to take over. It was important they looked out for each other. After all, the world outside the shop could be unforgiving and cold, often literally so, thought David, as the winter temperature dipped down to 17 degrees celcius for the second day that weekend.

It was Saturday night and the other employees were gazing yearningly towards the door, looking forward perhaps, to a night out at a club or more likely just collapsing asleep on their books in the dorms and David's mind turned towards what he'd learned about Gold from Jefferson, filling in the blanks with his own imagination.


	3. Chapter 3

Gold. The last name was one of the great ironies of Malcolm Gold Jr's life. Gold or wealth in general was something his existence was little touched by, yet he preferred to go by that name than "Malcolm," his deadbeat father's one.

Gold lived in a small one bedroom apartment a few streets over from Storybrooke Coffee, where he worked. Working in a coffee shop wasn't where he expected to find himself at this stage of his life, but every morning he somehow managed to drag himself into work, because the job put food on the table and kept a roof over his head and most importantly allowed him to take care of his son.

Not many places would hire him after his accident and he'd been fired from almost every other job he'd ever had before other than acting. People always said, don't quit your day job, but all the acting techniques he'd studied in school had done nothing to prepare him for acting like working at a call centre for example wasn't mind-numbingly boring or pretending that every rejection and failed callback didn't feel like his soul being further ground down under the bootheel of life.

He had to remind himself each day that he was lucky to be there. After all, the alternatives were so much worse.

It didn't matter where he landed, he felt his luck was almost always bad. He'd started out poor in Glasgow, Scotland and ended up the same way across the sea in Toronto, Canada where the weather was possibly even shittier.

Though it had seemed for a few years in his late twenties that that might not be his fate, he couldn't escape poverty. At least it wasn't as bad as what he endured as a child.

He'd miraculously gotten into a local grammar school, back when places like that were still concerned with giving scholarships to promising working class lads, when there wasn't so much competition for the few spots left. He went on to university, theatre scholarship, where he'd met his wife, a beautiful Canadian actress and he'd followed her back home to Toronto in the hopes that there would be a chance for US visas soon.

"First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin," they joked to each other, just like the song. New York wasn't too far away, just a hop and a skip over the border and Milah had a friend who could offer them jobs and get them work visas she said, it was just a matter of fixing a few pesky details.

In the meantime they were in Canada for a bit. It was fine with him.

Then the jobs in New York fell through. He wanted to go back to the UK, but Milah fell pregnant and needed the medical care and family support offered in her home country and other priorities took precedent. He was still acting but increasingly taking day jobs to supplant the family income now that Milah's pregnancy disqualified her from many acting roles.

In one of the workshops he took to keep his skills from getting rusty, he met Jefferson Madden and soon the two of them were working together for a demolition company, doing tear downs of old Victorian rooming houses in the downtown core to make way for more of the shiny new condo buildings that had so quickly altered the city's skyline in just a few short years.

They bonded over both of them being actors and having pregnant wives due to deliver at almost the same time.

Then one day Jefferson called Gold early in the morning, his voice twisted with excitement and anxiety. His wife Alice had gone into labour a month early and he was supposed to work that day. Jefferson and Gold had made a pact, that if one of their wives went into labour and the other one wasn't working they would replace each other at work.

No one expected Alice to deliver a month and a half early, but true to his word Gold showed up in Jefferson's place on the demolition crew and Jefferson went to his wife's bedside.

The demolition crew's foreman told Gold to go out on a wooden balcony to remove a work light, a simple enough instruction. Later the foreman said he'd meant the other balcony, the one _without_ the rotted timbers and Gold had misunderstood. There was no one to disagree when it was one man's word against the other, so no lawsuit ever materialized.

Gold should've know not to trust him, to listen, as he used to as a young man, to his gut, and innate sense of self-preservation. Back then, when he heard the first groans of the boards beneath his feet, no matter what the foreman had said he would have scarpered. But he'd grown soft in the past few years and thinking of his baby boy—now with Jefferson and Alice actually having their baby girl—it made it feel suddenly real for him in a way it never had before. He was going to be a father! And he wondered what the little boy—Baeden, they'd decided to call him—would look like. Would he have Milah's blue eyes or his own brown ones? Curly hair or straight? It was future Baeden he was thinking about the moment the balcony gave way all of a sudden.

The rotten section came loose at the edges like the hinges of a trap door, sending Gold falling to the ground below before he knew what had happened. Had Jefferson been there, with his preference for hats over helmets, he would've been dead. As it was, Gold's helmet saved his life. He only ended up with a mild concussion.

Unfortunately, even steel toed boots couldn't save his right leg from being utterly shattered. It was now held together with so much metal inside that he thought he'd probably light up an airport scanner from the back of the inspection queue.

He was in the hospital for ages and then he was barely out when Milah had the baby and there wasn't time for bemoaning the future of his career or doing more physio to improve his now clumsy gait. Not when there were diapers to be changed and tiny Baeden to look after.

He hadn't wanted Milah to go back to work so soon. It hadn't been the plan, but what other option did they have? Gold couldn't do construction work anymore and if acting opportunities in the city were thin on the ground before, they were now next to non-existent.

He did manage to get the occasional gig doing audiobooks or animated voice-overs, but those were hardly reliable. One advert for Scotch's Oatmeal he'd got through a friend managed to tide him over for a few months, then nothing.

Plus, he now needed new headshots, his agent said. His nose didn't even look the same since he'd broken it quite badly in the fall. It bothered and depressed him that even his profile had been altered, as if he wasn't the same person anymore. Even the face in the mirror was slightly different. It was depressing. He fell into a funk just thinking of returning to acting as he was now, finding a decent carer for Bae who didn't charge too much and fighting to get parts again. Added to the late nights up with tiny Bae, always hungry for a bottle, and Milah's resentment at not being able to stay home with her baby, it all just made him weary.

Finally Milah got a steady acting gig. It started as a guest spot on a TV series about fairy tales in the modern world. Or something, Gold never really paid much attention to the scripts floating around the apartment. It was an American show, but filmed in Canada to cut down on the budget. The producers got tax breaks from the local government if they hired Canadian actors. Of course, the principal roles would go to Americans and Brits, but the second degree parts were all filled by Canadian actors more than grateful for the opportunity for steady work that paid better than what they'd make on a local production.

Still, they liked her, promoted her from guest spot to series regular. Gold knew he should've been proud of her, that he should've been happy, but he was never generous that way. Milah said he didn't take her work seriously, that he was envious of what he no longer had, and it was true. All he could think was that it should've been him on the show, after all he could nail a British accent without blinking. He knew in his heart of hearts he was the better actor. It wasn't easy not to feel resentful when Milah brought home the cheques while he limped off to the free Mom and Baby group at the local library, using Bae's stroller like a walker to lean on.

Of course Milah didn't make it any easier constantly criticizing him fro not trying hard enough to find new work. He felt bad enough about himself already—he could just hear his father's voice in his ear as he'd heard it years ago, how he wasn't a man because he couldn't provide for his family, using cruel words; pathetic, sissy, cripple. He knew exactly what his father would have thought of him. It was what he thought of himself most of the time.

He remembered how he'd loved Milah back in the day when his career and life seemed full of promise, the two of them like entwined roses just about to bloom.. They were equals then and a part of him just wished the show would be over so they could return to that state, even if they were both unemployed.

The only thing that remained from that hopefulness of their early days was Bae who grew more beautiful and lively with each passing day. A testament at least, thought Gold, that he hadn't completely wasted his life if he had helped make and nurture this one perfect, amazing little person.


	4. Chapter 4

The cast party was where everything really went to shit.

Gold usually declined involvement in Milah's work engagents, wrap parties and the like. Someone needed to be home to watch Bae, he told her.

But in truth parties just made him drink. He never intended to over-induldge, but somehow it always happened. Maybe he was imagining it, but he hated the way the other cast members looked at him. It was like he could read their minds, all of them thinking "What's she doing with him?" when she introduced him as her husband. He'd always been a self-concsious person who didn't know how to talk to other people. Social events like these had always made something inside him freeze up. Before, he'd used alcohol to help loosen himself up, but post-accident all it seemed to do was bring all the frustration and resentment he kept in check on a daily basis up to the surface.

He was horrified to discover that now, when he got drunk he got mean like his father. Never physically, but he could have a tongue like a razor blade when he got in a mood. He could be clever with insults and sarcasm when he wanted to cut another person down. He'd learn as a child, what power there was in making another person feel small. It was a side of himself he wasn't terribly proud of.

The next day he'd always wake up with a headache and a throbbing sense of embarrassment and remorse, banished to the couch for a night or two as punishment. Better for the peace of the household to let Milah go with her friends to the premieres and parties. He hated dressing up anyway.

He had more fun at home with Bae playing make believe games with Playmobils, Star Wars figures and Legos. He liked playing the villains, giving them different voices, filling their speeches with grandiose language. Bae played the heroes, but it was Gold's job to think up all the complex plots and scenarios that kept Bae entranced. It was the only real acting he ever did now adays. Improv with action figures, he styled it, to make himself feel better.

But the wrap party for the last season of the fairy tale show—that he invited himself along to, even though she had only mentioned the event in passing, not expecting him to be interested.

Now that she knew he was coming, and had even bought a suit for the occasion, Milah was growing nervous.

She tried to play it casual, but deep in her bones she knew he was on to her. In a strange way she was even relieved about it. As much as she'd dreaded the massive row that was bound to occur once he found out about her affair with her co-star Killian Jones, she knew this moment was inevitable. She had kept it quiet for so long not just because she was worried about how the scandal would effect the show, but a part of her had still thought maybe she and Gold could repair things, that Gold would go back to the man she'd married, a man who still had dreams for himself beyond those of the people she'd grown up with. But too much time had passed. They had both changed too much, and she had to realize that things could never go back to the way they were. She was a grown woman tired of sneaky around her husband's back.


	5. Chapter 5

He wanted to see for himself because he was sure there was a person on the show she was having an affair with.

As they did the rounds Gold drank from anything the waiter staff gliding by with trays had on them. Self-conscious about looking old, he'd left his cane at home. He soon realized his mistake as his leg began to pain him, something a pair of dress shoes with little cushioning did nothing to alleviate. Initially he was just drinking to dull the physical pain, but as he read the looks in people's eyes when they saw him and Milah together, it became emotional as well.

Still, some twisted part of him was determined to see this party out to the bitter end. So Gold went around with Milah as she introduced him to the other cast members, familiar as vague faces from the TV screen. He tried to remember the names, but they all quickly blurred together. Most were women and he couldn't picture any of the men he met holding Milah's attention for very long.

That is, until he heard a melodious voice with an Irish lilt to it. He didn't even have to turn around then. He knew.

After all, wasn't that what she'd said about him, way back in theatre school when they first met?

"It was your voice that I fell in love with before anything. It was one of those stupid mask exercises they had us doing-I couldn't even see your face, but your voice-you didn't sound like anyone else I'd ever heard. I knew right then I had to meet you."

That was Milah, in a nutshell impetuous and daring. He would've never had the guts to make the first move and a part of him still loved her for it.

Gold sized up his rival. Sized "up" was right. Damn, did the jerk have to be tall as well? Not to mention probably fifteen years his junior. That he could walk without limping, of course went without saying.

"And who's this?" asked the man with a cheerful smile that Gold was just itching to wipe of his smugly handsome face.

"Oh that's just my husband," laughed Milah as the man handed her a drink. "Gold, meet Killian Jones. Killian, meet Gold."

"Really? Somewhat taller than I expected, eh?" said Jones with a wink and him and Milah burst out laughing as if this was the epitome of wit. Either that or they were both already far drunker than they initially seemed. "Oh, you've got to try the champagne, Mils," he babbled on at Milah, using a pet name Gold had never heard before. "I think Sidney blew the bank on this one-"

"Excushe me," cut in Gold, who realized he was starting to slur his words a bit himself. "But I think we better be going," he said. Then he tried to steer Milah away from Jones by the elbow, but she wouldn't budge.

"Relax, Gold," snapped Milah. "The party's just getting started. But hey, maybe if your foot's hurting you, you'd best take a seat."

As Gold turned to argue with her, he noticed Jones looking at him and on his face was such an expression of pity and embarassment on Gold's behalf, that his barely contained rage burst forth with the force of a sudden volcanic explosion.

Gold, without much preamble, but with plenty of champagne and four shots of yeagers under his belt tried to slug him.

It wasn't exactly a subtle attack. Jones saw him coming and simply stepped back out of the path of his punch. And Gold, who was off balance without his cane and drunk off his face missed his competitor by a mile and landed in a heap on the floor.

He wasn't entirely sure how he ended up in a cab with the elderly Norwegian woman. All he knew was that there were splashes of vomit on his uncomfortable shoes and he was carrying a prop cane he'd liberated at some point he didn't remember from the set, but somehow he got back home.

Milah wasn't there next morning, but at least Bae had Gold's unshaven hungover face to greet him at breakfast.

Gold's separation from Milah two days later surprised no one but the cat.


	6. Chapter 6

After the separation was complete Gold found himself at loose ends. Milah moved in with Killian and Gold found himself a new, smaller apartment to call home. Officially he and Milah shared custody, but Baeden still stayed with him more often than not.

He knew Milah loved Bae, there was no question of that, but he often got the sense that Killian, who was considerably younger wasn't ready to settle down and be a parent, especially to another man's son who looked so much like his father.

Milah offered to get a nanny for Bae, but Gold outright refused. No paid nanny, no matter how kind could give Bae the kind of love and attention his own father could, he reasoned. And so Milah gave him a small stipend to help him pay for whatever Bae needed. He supplemented this with his monthly welfare and disability cheques. Money from the occasional under the table voice-over gig helped him maintain his apartment and take care of Bae, the way he'd never been looked after as a child.

Maybe his career was in the toilet, but looking after a small child was far more of a full time gig than he'd ever imagined. Days disappeared into each other as he and Bae followed their routine. Looking after Bae was exhausting, but it made him happy. It was nice to be a hero to someone, even if it was just because Bae was too young to know any better.

Without Bae, Gold found he had no purpose anymore. Where once he had lived for acting and to become famous and wealthy someday, esteemed in Milah's eyes, he was shocked to discover that he now lived almost completely for Bae.

Weekends and the rare weekdays when Bae was with Milah and Jones always started well. Gold would get to soak in the tub for as long as he had to to really get the muscles in his injured leg supple and loose again for the week ahead. Then he'd get his weekly eight dollar haircut in Chinatown, buy groceries and prepare meals for the rest of the week to put in the freezer. This could occupy a day if he played it out long enough. But then loneliness would set in, along with the despair and self-loathing.

He didn't have any friends in this foreign city and the idea of dating seemed to require far more confidence than he had in the tank.

Really, things were fine the way they were, he told himself. At least he had a structure and a routine that worked. He wasn't really happy, but at least he wasn't unhappy, so that was something, wasn't it?

But then Bae got older and started preschool. He was away every morning five days a week and it was time for Gold to started to look for work he could fit around Bae's schedule.

For nine months he worked part-time for a poster company putting up posters in bus shelters and electrical poles around town while Bae was at school, but all the walking around town hauling bundles of flyers and a bucket of poster glue in all sorts of weather was murder on his leg.

He went at it as long as he could until one freezing February day, when he slipped on a patch of ice. It was only a small fall, but it fractured his already weak ankle. Milah came round to check up on him and brought some money. He hated having to accept her charity and having her see him like this yet again, not to mention how pathetically grateful he was to see her. It made him cringe just to listen to himself. Bae had to go with her full time for a few weeks until Gold had a walking cast. Worse still, when he returned to work, he discovered his job had been given to someone else. No one had even bothered to notify him, he was that inconsequential.

A chance perusal of craigslist netted him some voiceover work on a video game, but when that was done, he had nothing.

He was in overdraft at the bank and maxed out on his credit cards and he knew it was only a matter of time before he had to go back to Milah to ask for more money. But if he did that there would be questions about his fitness to look after Bae. She might take him away again. He couldn't stand to be separated from his son a second time. It was hard enough, even when he knew he'd get Bae back. No, it just wasn't happening.

So every day, while Bae was at kindergarten, Gold took his beat up old laptop to a coffee shop near Bae's school to search online for jobs and send in applications and tweak his resume and cover letter for each position. If anything looked promising he'd go and bring his resume in person.

The coffee shop was a necessary evil now that he could no longer afford internet at home and the friendly neighbour who'd been happy to let him boost off her signal had moved away. At least there was enough student traffic in the place, that none of the barristas got bored enough to start harassing him for only buying a single small coffee over the course of several hours.

The name of the coffee shop was Storybooke Coffee.


	7. Chapter 7

Gold skipped one day surfing the net at Storybrooke Coffee to go to a job interview. The position seemed mildly promising. Sure it was just another boring call centre, but the office was only one subway stop away from Bae's school.

He tried to get himself excited for the prospect, reminding himself that unlike the postering job, this would be warm and indoors for the winter. Also, the limits to his mobility could hardly be an issue with him working a phone. Plus, he was an actor and had a professionally trained voice. He was a shoo-in.

And then came the interview.

What a cluster-fuck.

The interviewer took one look at him with his limp and cane and started babbling something about the difficulty getting insurance for "someone like him." As if he was likely to re-injure himself using a bloody phone?

Had he been a calmer person, he might've tried to argue his case in a pleasant, deferential manner, but with all the frustrations piling up in his life and this last, best hope for not having to go crawling back to Milah hat in hand snatched away because of some stupid administrative bullshit, Gold sort of hit the roof.

He couldn't remember the exact details of everything he'd said to the interviewer, secretary and security guard who escorted him out of the building, but he was sure the words "cunt" and "wanker" featured heavily in the scenario.

Back in the coffee shop he was nearly gnawing on the cardboard lip of his coffee mug with rage, when someone sat down across from him at the table.

It was a large twelve person table, rectangular shaped and anyone could sit at it, however, the unwritten rule was that this table was for single, serious students at work, which only added to his surprise when the person sitting across from him exclaimed loudly, "My God! Is it you?"

Everyone's heads turned. Gold stared fixedly at his laptop.

Being located downtown near Allen Gardens ensured that the coffee shop was occasionally frequented by homeless people and unfortunate individuals of questionable sanity.

Whenever he saw one of them, all Gold could think about was what a short step it would be for him to graduate to one of their number.

He tried not to make eye contact and hoped the person left him alone. Today, of all days, he just didn't need this, but it was not to be.

"It is you!" cried out the man.

The voice was strangely familiar. Against his better judgement Gold looked up.

"Gold?" asked the man, in a voice full of emotion. It was Jefferson.


	8. Chapter 8

Jefferson! Of all the people he thought himself least likely to see, Jefferson was top of that list.

The last communication they'd had was over five years ago, back when Gold was first injured, before Bae was even born.

To call it communication though would be a little strong, considering that Jefferson had left a horribly teary, apologetic message on Gold's answerphone, which he'd never replied to seeing as how Gold was in and out of surgery at the time. Jefferson had apparently come to visit him in the hospital too, according to his next message, but Gold had been so doped up on morphine that he either didn't recall or Jefferson had never really been there in the first place. There were a few more messages after that, in which Jefferson explained about the difficulties of Alice's delivery and the weight, length and head circumference of their young daughter.

Lonely as he was Gold had contemplated returning his friend's call when he was discharged, but he kept on putting it off. The truth was, just the thought of seeing Jeff filled him with fear. It wasn't just seeing Jefferson's reaction to his own appearance, but he was so angry, he was afraid if he talked to Jefferson he'd say something terrible to him that he could never take back. He knew himself and the kind of things he could say. It should've been Jefferson, not him. Jefferson had no chance as an actor anyway, couldn't act his way out of a paper bag. Gold at least had a chance, or rather had had a chance. Better to say nothing, nothing at all than to let rip with all the angry words buzzing like wasps inside his head.

It took six months of Jefferson leaving messages on Gold's phone for his former friend to finally take the hint.

And now here he was in the flesh.

Gold was startled that Jefferson had recognized him first, altered as he was, and that he hadn't even noticed Jefferson walking in despite the fact that the other man had barely changed. Oh he had a few gray streaks in his hair and a slightly thicker physique but that was the extent of it.

And now the man reached across the table to touch him on the arm.

Perhaps it was that action which did it, making Gold freeze, instead of getting up and walking away. Nobody, other than Bae, had actually touched him with affection in so long, that it completely disarmed him.

"I can't believe it," murmured Jefferson in awe. "I'm so glad to find you at last."

"I-I d-didn't know you were even looking for me," stammered Gold.

"Of course I was looking for you!" exclaimed Jefferson. "What you did for me, words can't express. I mean without you, I know I probably would've died on that construction site. I never wore-"

"A helmet. Yeah I remember. Stupid idiot," muttered Gold.

Jefferson grinned as if Gold had complimented him. "I was!"

Somehow, all the curiosity he'd repressed, the desire to know what his friend's life had been like after they parted rose up within Gold and just wouldn't let him go. Almost against his own wishes, he found himself asking, "And Alice and the wee bairn? How are they?"

"Serafina, that's our daughter's name, she gave us a bit of a scare at the beginning. Bad apgar scores and all that, but she's great now! Five years old! Going into kindergarten!"

"Bae too!" babbled the usually taciturn Gold, Bae being the one subject he could never talk about enough. "I can't believe it, you just turn around and bam- they're almost six! It's unreal. His full name's Baeden, after me uncle."

"You know you should come over with Baeden and Milah! I know people always say that stuff, but I really mean it. Alice still talks about you guys, you know. We were so worried, you know, the way you looked after- I came to see you, y'know, you were doped up on drugs and maybe you don't remember, but I did- I did come to see you."

"I know," said Gold, "you mentioned, in one of your phone messages. I didn't actually remember."

"It doesn't matter. It's so good to see you now anyway, to know that you're alright. Look, why waste more time, why don't you call Milah right now and tonight we can all get together for dinner and-"

"Uh, there's not really a me and Milah anymore, Jeff. We kind of split up."

"Shit, I'm sorry."

"Don't be, it's alright. She got a job on a big TV show, moved on. Anyway, Bae stays with me most of the time so I'm okay with it. How about you? You in anything these days?"

"Me? Are you kidding? With a family it just got to be too unpredictable. I had to put them first and as it happened my aunt passed away around the time Serafina was born and I inherited this coffee shop. I figured at least if I was here running the business my hours and location would be more predictable, our income could be steadier, we could make plans for the future. It's not much, but we're really starting to turn a profit. Truth is, I miss the acting sometimes, the variety of being someone different every month. How about you? You must be in something. You were the best by far of the lot of us, the most passionate and committed. I always kind of felt I was just dicking around. But you- I wouldn't believe you'd ever give that up."

"Not willing," Gold's smile gave a bitter twist as he touched the top of his cane. It was hooked over the surface of the table. The wood grain of the two objects was so similar, it was easy to miss. He watched Jefferson's eyes follow his motion. "But there isn't much demand these days."

"Is that from-? Still?"

"Yeah." Still? Really? For God's sake what did Jeff think falling off a building was all about?

"No!" Jefferson's eyes went wide with shock and guilt. Gold thought his former friend was going to cry.

Gold however, didn't feel the least like crying. Whatever shock he'd experienced at was over years ago. Emotions of rage and anger, helplessness and desperation, all of which had been seething inside him just minutes before were suddenly at peace. Suddenly, he felt perfectly calm and in control for the first time in ages. No longer was he floundering aimlessly in the dark water, unsure of which say to swim to get to land.

He knew exactly what his next move was. All Jeff needed was just the slightest nudge in the right direction.

"Listen, I know I can't make it up to you for what you did for me, there is nothing I could do to repay that or give back what you lost, but if there's anything, seriously, anything at all I can do to help you, you just name it," said Jefferson.

"You mean that? Seriously?"

"Absolutely!" nodded Jefferson so hard his hat nearly fell off.

"Because I- I'm currently unemployed." Gold looked down with the biggest sad eyes he could manage. It embarrassed him, but for Bae, he'd play his former friend for all he was worth. "I'm worried I might lose Bae if I can't get anything. I was putting up posters for a while, then I had a fall, cracked the same leg again. Went for a job interview today- call centre, shouldn't be a problem for me, even if I can't walk too well or stand for several hours at a time it shouldn't be a problem I thought, not for that, but they started going on at me about how they'd have to take out insurance and all this other rubbish before they'd even consent to hire me, and it was just this extra expense and there was no point to and now I'm- well I'm spending everyday in a coffee shop sending out resumes and most don't even bother to write back to reject me. They just act like I don't exist," said Gold, horrified to feel that his own eyes were growing moist. Any second now, he realized, he was going to cry. He hadn't meant to do that. It was supposed to be an act. He wasn't supposed to be this emotional, this out of control. But after shoving all the emotions about his life down, this little crack in the wall was about to let everything run out in a flood. He had to get out of there. Even he wasn't that pathetic, to cry in front of Jefferson.

"Excuse me, I gotta go," he mumbled quickly, grabbed his cane and began pushing past the people in line trying to get to the door, away from Jefferson as fast as possible.

"Gold! Hey, Gold wait!"

Oh goody, now everyone was staring.

"You left your laptop!"

Gold turned around and let Jefferson catch up with him, his face burning with embarrassment. He wanted to keep going, but his laptop was one of the few possessions of actual value he owned. Plus, it contained all of Bae's baby pictures.

Gold took the laptop from Jefferson. "Look, I have to go pick up Bae, I shouldn't have said anything. Seriously, you don't owe me anything."

"I need a new someone at the coffee bar," said Jefferson. "Apparently you spend every day here anyway, might as well get paid for it."

"What?"

"Come work at my coffee shop."

"Doing what?"

"I dunno. Whatever barristas do. Pour coffee, ring up purchases, dress like hipsters. Whatever you feel like," he shrugged.

Gold looked over at the barristas behind the bar bustling around dashing from one end of the coffee bar to the other sticking panninis in the pannini grilling machine and coffee cups under the coffee cup filling machine. It didn't look that difficult, aside for the part where he had to stand for six hours in a row, which would make it impossible.

"I-I can't stand for too long on the-"

"No worries," said Jefferson and grabbed a tall stool from one of the high table overlooking the street. Then he opened the swinging door that let them into the area behind the coffee bar and put the stool inside. "There you go."

"Uh-"

"Can you be here at six-"

"I have to take Bae to school in the morning," said Gold.

"Ten, let's say ten am," said Jefferson.

"A- alright," said Gold unsteadily, still not quite processing the odd U-turn his day had taken.

"Grand," said Jefferson, with a genuinely warm smile. "I'll have a nametag and apron ready for you by then."

"What? Why?"

"You just got the job."

"What how many days a week is it?"

"Five."

"Hours?"

"Whenever Bae is at school. You choose. I'm flexible. Twenty bucks an hour."

"Is that really regulation pay?"

"Whatever."

"Uh, you sure?"

"For my hero? Anything."

"Uh-kay. Thank you, thanks," muttered Gold. He left the coffee shop with as much speed as he could muster, worried that his good fortune would evaporate and Jefferson would realize he had momentarily gone mad and revoke the offer.

It was strange to feel so discomfited by the prospect. After all, next to money, it was what Gold most wanted. Still, Gold had no food service related experience, didn't drink coffee, had a bad leg he couldn't stand on for over an hour, was over 40 years old, and had been known, in his one previous job to involve interacting with the public, to have seriously shitty customer service skills.

A worse coffee shop employee prospect Jefferson probably couldn't have picked out of a police line up if he tried. And he was hiring him on at a pay rate over that of a regular employee. And to think, all it'd taken was a near death experience and the complete destruction of his acting career.

Jefferson regretted that he didn't have more to offer Gold. After all, Gold had probably saved his life and in doing so, saved his wife and child from penuary. The coffee shop wasn't doing really well yet. It would be a few years more before they opened other branches and the business really started to take off.

There wasn't a lot of money to give out, because it was all tied up in the shop. All Jefferson could do for Gold was offer him the job.

It wasn't what Gold had dreamed he'd do with his life, but he was a practical man and at least it would keep him indoors through another brutal Canadian winter.


	9. Chapter 9

3 YEARS LATER…

It was another dreary Monday at Storybrooke Coffee, made even drearier for Gold by the gray December clouds and incessant Christmas carols playing on perma-loop over the sound system. He'd already been called "Grinch" five times and it wasn't even 9:30 yet.

Gold glanced wistfully outside at the children playing in the yard of the daycare across the street, thinking of Bae as a toddler. They were all bundled up tight in their snowsuits, waddling around the play equipment like a bunch of colourful penguins.

It had snowed overnight, beautiful soft unearthly flakes The snow was still falling making little drifts on the ledges of windows, pillowy layers on the boughs of the fir trees and clumps on the roofs of the cars like icing on cupcakes.

Gold thought about how Bae cheered when he came in for breakfast and saw it.

"Yay! I wished so hard and I asked Santa—! Look! A white Christmas! I knew he'd come through!"

"Of course, Santa gave you a white Christmas," grumbled Gold, washing down another aspirin with his coffee before slathering some jam stained butter on a bagel and handing it to Bae. "We live in frickin' Canada. It's a white Christmas _every_ bloody year. Now we better get a move on to school. It's going to be slow going today."

Bae's face fell as he looked down at his bagel.

Gold wrestled with the little metal spikey thing that went over the tip of his cane for the snow, feeling guilty. Just because he couldn't enjoy the snow much anymore, why did he have to ruin it for Bae?

"Uh, but listen, when you get off school we can go to the park. Alright? You can do your homework after, when it gets dark. No point wasting the light, right?"

This seemed to perk Bae right up, though Gold had to keep pulling him away from snowdrifts and frozen puddles on the walk to school as he chattered to his father about all the fun things they were going to do at the park. Gold's spirits fell as he heard mention of skating, sledding and other activities he'd have to try to steer Bae away from.

Gold was late for work again. Luckily, he looked so fierce, shaking all the snow off his black coat and stomping his boots on the mat when he came in, that no one dared upbraid him. He mounted his stool and spent the rest of the day glaring down at the rosy cheeked patrons as they tromped dirty slush and mush into the coffee shop, chattering excitedly about the snow that had finally come.

At the end of his shift, Gold went to the university library. Bae was waiting quietly in the science fiction section reading comic books. It was their Wednesday and Thursday arrangement for those days of the week when Gold's shift went a half-hour over the time Bae's school let out. They'd only been doing it the last few months, since Bae now refused flat out to go to the afterschool program. Some of the kids were mean to him there, he said, and despite Gold talking to the supervisor, it didn't seem to make any difference. He really wished Milah was around for things like this. He just didn't have the verbal finesse to charm his way into the hearts of authority figures to make them give him what he wanted. Sadly, he had been born without the gene for bullshitting.

Like Gold, Bae never really seemed to gel too well with his peer group. Sometimes Gold worried he'd spent so much time with Bae as a child, talking to him like an adult and that it was his fault his son felt awkward around the children at the afterschool program. Or maybe they were just wankers. There was also that possibilities.

At least Bae seemed happy in the library, immersed in the world of books, escaping to other lands. He leapt up as soon as he heard Gold's distinctive tread on the other side of the stacks. "C'mon Dad I was waiting like _forever!_ It's going to be great! We can pretend we're in Narnia and the White Witch has got control of the whole land and froze everything! Okay, you be the witch and I'll be Peter alright?"

Gold smiled and played along with Bae as they walked to the park, forgetting the pain in his leg as he got into the character, giving the White Witch a cool monotone voice, and an icy stare as Bae darted around him with a magic sword, made from a stick he'd found by the side of the road.


	10. Chapter 10

They were lucky to live near one of the best parks in the city. One of the things Gold liked about Toronto was how many parks there were. You couldn't walk too far without finding at least some green space with play equipment for children. The park near their apartment featured giant toboganning hills and an outdoor skating rink.

Gold watched nervously as Bae went up and down the hill with his tobagan, worried he'd fly off his sled or hit a tree. He was glad when Bae was back by his side at the bottom of the hill.

Then Bae begged Gold to take him skating, but Gold vetoed that suggestion on the grounds that renting skates was too expensive. What Gold didn't say was that he couldn't skate himself and he was worried about Bae injuring himself out alone on the slippery ice. It was frustrating not being able to do everything Bae wished they could together. So often he worried about his son missing out.

"Dad, you never let us have any fun," pouted Bae as he stuffed his mittened hands in his pockets.

"Oh Come on Bae, there's loads we can do without skating!" said Gold glancing desperately at the snowdrifts around them for inspiration.

"Like what?"

"Uh, how about how about we build a snowman?

Bae took his hands out of his pockets. "Oh-kay."

So they ended up spending the rest of their afternoon in the park building a snowman. Mostly this involved Gold clumping snow together to make snowballs and rolling the balls in the wet packing snow to make the three large sphere-ish shapes necessary as Bae capered around trying to find appropriate rocks for eyes and buttons and singing "Do you want to build a snowman?"

Gold grumbled good naturedly that it was bad enough when those cartoon characters were singing it on TV without it happening in real life as well, but secretly he was pleased Bae was enjoying himself.

"Admit it, you liked it!" insisted Bae.

"I did not!"

"Did too!"

"Oh that's it! Come 'ere you!"

But Bae danced away out of his grasp. "Aaah! It's the abominable snowman!" he shrieked.

Gold growled like the abominable snowman from the Rudolph Christmas special and Bae giggled as he hid behind a snow covered bush.

Gold began to whistle faux casually as he brushed some snow off the bough of a tree and packed it into a snowball.

Curious about his father's whistling Bae popped his head up above the bush.

"Gotcha!" crowed Gold as he threw the snowball, but the wind blew it back, spraying the disintegrating snow into his face.

Bae laughed so hard he collapsed in the snow.

"Dad help!"

Gold went over to make sure Bae was okay. Bae lay in the snow, pink cheeked and giggling, waiting impatiently for his father. As soon as Gold came up to look over at him he threw snow at Gold's legs and grabbed him trying to pull him down with him.

For a moment, Gold's gulped with fear, frightened of hitting the ground and hurting himself, but then he remembered the softness of the snow and just let himself go. Together, he and Bae fell on the pillowy snow, wrestling each other and laughing freely.

Once they exhausted this game, they lay in the snow covered field and made snow angels until their hair was soaked. If he hadn't started to grow cold Gold felt he could have fallen asleep right there. But now the sun was setting, the sky gone pink and blue above the silhouettes of the trees. With a sigh, the responsible adult in him knew it was time to get home.

Gold sat up and Bae helped him to his feet. More time was wasted looking around for Gold's cane which had ended up half hidden by a snowdrift.

They started to trudge home. Bae looked exhausted after all his exertions, pulling his sleigh slowly behind him.

Gold's heart softened at the memory of pulling Bae in the sleigh the winter before. Bae was smaller and lighter then of course and even then Gold had found it a bit tricky with his leg, but still not unmanageable.

"Hey, remember how I pulled you last year and we played sled dogs?" asked Gold. his eyes softening at the memory.

"Uh-huh," said Bae as he climbed over the high snow by the curb and there was a hopeful glimmer in his big brown eyes that Gold couldn't help but notice.

"Hey, you're tired, why don't you let me give you a ride," said Gold.

"But I'm a big boy now, you said I should pull it."

"Hey, even big grown-up boys need a break now and again."

"You sure?"

"Absolutely," nodded Gold. "Another month or two and you'll be too heavy, best do it while I still can."

"Okay!" smiled Bae and hopped on.

Gold tied the rope into a large loop which he cinched over his shoulder and across his chest. He kept one gloved hand under the rope to keep it from cutting into his shoulder and the other on his cane for balance. He was rather proud to make it all the way back to their flat without having to ask Bae to get off the sled, although it was slow going at times.

They lived only two flights up and there was no elevator. It was a small building with a parking lot and a small green space in the back. They tilted the sled against the fence to dry and they climbed the stairs to the second floor, Gold gripping the bannister a little more tightly than usual, hoping Bae wouldn't notice and think his old man had grown soft over the summer.

Inside the apartment they took off their wet clothes and Gold hung them over the heater to dry. He made them hot cocoas and microwave pizzas for dinner and put their wet clothes over the space heater to dry. Bae had had snowpants of course, but Gold didn't. No point spending money on something he might wear once a year. After being out in the cold for so long a hot soothing bath was bliss and Gold was pretty sure he would've dissolved into the tub water, if it wasn't for Bae splashing him and driving his plastic boats through his hair. A day spent playing like a ten year old romping through the snow over uneven ground in freezing wet trousers, pulling a sled- he knew he'd pay for it tomorrow, but it had been the perfect winter's day with his son, a special gift for both of them.


	11. Chapter 11

Since she was a child Belle's family had always got National Geographic. Unlike the other adults in their town, who were mostly ranchers or farmers, Belle's parents had gone to college. Her mother had studied in Sydney and taught English at the town's school. Her father, when he wasn't working at the family general store was an inventor. He'd even done a year of engineering training in his stint with the army way back before Belle was born. People in town thought they put on airs and had pretensions, but it wasn't true. They'd just tasted a little more of what the world had to offer outside their little town, and it hadn't frightened them enough to make them shy of another bite.

Belle was 34 when she finally left home for good.

She was ashamed it had taken so long. Of all her childhood friends growing up she had been one of the most determined not to settle for their little outback town—the kid who tried the hardest in school—who won all the scholarships- the one who was supposed to do something more with her life. Belle always believed she was the one who'd leave their cramped little shop and the rest of it behind in the dust, forget it all like it was a bad dream and start her _real_ life with witty educated people who'd appreciate the things she knew and valued her talents and intelligence somewhere far from here like Sydney or Melbourne or even Paris, Tokyo, London or New York. And for a while it all seemed possible.

Going to university on scholarship in Sydney, spending a gap year travelling through Europe with her boyfriend, everything she dreamed of seemed close enough to touch…But then in her last year at uni her Mom got sick with a very aggressive form of cancer. She was told she had just a month or two to live and Belle headed home without a second thought. Her father was a mess and so was his shop. Her mother did at least half the work at the shop ordinarily, and Belle, who'd been helping out since she was a child, found herself naturally filling her mother's role there, while her father devoted his time to tending to his wife.

It was supposed to be just a semester off—but then it took a year for her mom a year to pass.

Belle didn't regret the time she spent with her mother before she passed away instead of at school. It was only some of the time after, those years of aimlessness and fear that she wished she'd spent more wisely.

It was her mum who always pushed her to leave their little town and seek out a better fortune somewhere else—her Mum who believed she could do well in school and become whatever she wanted to be. When her Mum passed it was like all her faith and belief in herself just died as well. Belle called her Mum and spoke to her every day of her life until she died.

She was an only child and they were so close—Collette wasn't just her Mum, she was also her best friend, keeper of all her hopes and dreams, her touchstone through all her scholarly trials.

With her mum gone, it felt to Belle like she didn't know who she was anymore. She kept picking up her cell phone to talk to her Mum something interesting, a humourous observation about her day or some random person she saw who piqued her interest, a funny story in the paper, only to realize with a heart-sickening jolt that she wasn't there anymore, to feel her death like a blow again and again every day, a gaping hole in her heart that the wind seemed to whistle right through. Belle felt empty now, like she was a hollow thing in a Belle shaped carpace and it disturbed her that no one at school seemed to notice how wrong she was now.

Nobody at school seemed to understand the all consuming nature of her grief, or to really care. They had their own problems, exams to write and love lives to deal with. Belle had never felt so alone before in her whole life. Besides the monstrous size of her sadness, her subjects seemed trivial. Nothing could hold her attention now. It all seemed so pointless. It was strange, she'd always known all living things die, intellectually of course, but never experiencing the death of a close relative, having none, the intensity of her grief came up unexpected, like a tidal wave in a sea of calm. Could a human being feel this sad and live? she often wondered as she drenched her flattened pillow in tears night after night.

So she fled to the only other person on the planet who understood what she was going through. Her father, Maurice was the only other person living who really knew, really loved her mother. Collette had been so young, so much younger than him and so full of enthusiasm for life. He'd always assumed he'd be the one to go first, that he'd pass on and she'd maybe find someone else to share her twilight years with, still an elegant beautiful woman in her 50s and 60s. He and Belle understood each other in their grief and they helped each other to survive. Belle had never been as close to her quiet father Maurice as to her more effusive mother, but now she realized more clearly what a surprisingly creative and inventive soul he was.

Underneath his quiet demeanor he was a man of surprising strength and erudition and as they helped each other recover from their grief, father and daughter forged a stronger bond. But then, just when Bele was feeling just about strong enough to go back to school, he got sick with a neurodegenerative disease. She couldn't, in all conscience just leave him all alone in their tiny outback town to turn to dust. Not after they had just become closer again. So she looked after him and put her dreams on hold to run the shop once again. He didn't want her to, but there was little he could do to stop her. He was the last of her family and she wouldn't let him go without a fight. More than anything Belle dreaded being alone in the world. Her father worried about her, encouraged her to date, but everyone her age in the town had long since moved on to other places with more work. Ironically, Belle was now the only one of her primary school class still left.

When her father finally passed the great depression she'd feared all along never came. She realized he'd been leaving her bit by bit with each passing year this whole time and to be honest the last year and a half she'd been with him, he'd barely seemed like her father at all. He'd forget all their conversations or hallucinate about where he was. Usually, he barely had the energy or muscle control to talk half the time. She still loved him and felt guilty for feeling relief, but she supposed it made sense in a way.

She'd always urged her parents to leave their town, but in the end she thought maybe they'd been too scared, too unprepared to face a world of people who didn't know them to ever leave. Belle didn't have that problem. She looked at the faces of the townspeople at the funeral and understood that while everybody there knew her, nobody, other than the poor soul in the coffin ever really _knew_ her, the person she was inside and the potential still contained within her

Belle put up the shop and the house for sale and left town the next day.

She travelled. She went to all the places she and her father had talked of the last few years of his life, the places they'd seen in National Geographic. She did it on the cheap, staying in hostels where she could, making some money teaching English in Korea, China, Hong Kong, Thailand and Japan. It wasn't hard to make friends among the other foreigners. Everybody here was alone, looking for a friendly face or a body to warm up to at night, a new adventure. No one ever guessed her true age. Most were recent university graduates looking to do something with otherwise unfortunately useless degrees in English, or to make money for graduate school. Eventually she worked her way across the ocean to North America. Her best friend Ruby from the English school she'd worked at in Busan was from Canada, and had gone back to uni in Toronto.

She'd talked up their "mature student package" to Belle over the phone and that Belle might be able to do something about her missing courses at college there and go to graduate school. The price was better than schools in the U.S. and Belle was eager to see a new continent.

The new Belle, unbound by a conformist small town life of caregiving figured what the hell?

Two months later she was in Toronto, boiling in Ruby's overheated one bedroom apartment, living in a camping tent in the living room for privacy. Ruby was kind and ridiculously generous, charging her the unheard-of-for-Toronto small fee of two hundred dollars a month and cleaning the dishes in exchange.

But in the two years since they'd last hung out together, Belle had forgotten the extent of Ruby's voracious appetite for sex and partying. Her roommate would bring anyone she met at a club or online, man or woman back to the apartment for raucous, wall-shaking sexual marathons.

Then there was the entire pack of Ruby's wolf-like teenaged brothers who seemed content to descend on the apartment from their home in the suburbs with their sleeping bags every weekend to sponge off their older sister's hospitality for a weekend of club hopping, drinking and drug taking. Belle's travels had made her open minded, but she was still a light sleeper. After Belle emerged from her tent one morning to find one of Ruby's brothers passed out in a drunken stupor by the front flap, she knew it was time to start looking for a new place. But to do that Belle needed money and to make money she needed a job, preferably one that wouldn't interfere with her college classes. Maybe something at one of the coffee shops nearby so she could head to school right after work.

So one snowy Tuesday over winter break she headed off to the library with her laptop to look up books on resumes, anything to get out of the noisy apartment to someplace with a little quiet where she could think properly and work.


End file.
